Focusing on Mission, Ministry & Leadership, Wellness and NZ Trends.
Every day we come across material that's helpful to those ministering in the Church. Some of it is vital, some of it is just plain interesting. This blog will aim to include a wide mix of resource material: links to other blogs and sites, helpful quotes, anecdotal material you can use, the names of books worth reading and more.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Secret Churchgoers

Earlier this year I read the book, I Sold My Soul on eBay by Hemant Mehta. It's an interesting insight into how an atheist (a 'friendly' one) viewed Christian church services and what suggestions he had to make about them as far as making them inviting to outsiders, strangers, visitors.

The person who 'bought' Mehta is Jim Henderson, a pastor who'd long since felt that the way most Christians are taught to evangelise is more off-putting than encouraging. There a recent article on USA Today about Henderson, who has continued to explore news ways of being Jesus-friendly to those who aren't Christians. Some of his approaches are mentioned in the article but one that I want to mention in particular is his Church Rater website.

On the home page of the site at the moment is a video conversation between Henderson and Matt Caspar which briefly discusses the issues Henderson is concerned with. Caspar is not a Christian, but he and Henderson did a road trip some time back, producing the book Jim and Casper Go to Church. Caspar is also Henderson's partner in the ChurchRater.com venture, and says his engaging with Christians is motivated by his desire to get them to question their certitude, and to see that atheists don't have tails and horns.

The Church Rater site does exactly what it says: allows people to anonymously assess a particular church's service. These reviews are then put up on the site. At present there are almost a thousand of them. The site also has an 'endorsements' section where there are links to various comments about the site's modus operandi. Some are not complimentary, as you'd expect.

About Me

I write stuff (lots of it), compose music, act in plays, play the piano....and now, after half a century of being a person who goes to work, I've retired.

Read heaps of books, like classical music (and older popular music). Have been a Christian all my life - under various guises: Catholic, Pentecostal, Baptist - (worked from 2007-2010 for the Presbyterians). Ecumenism alive!

In 2014 I published three e-books. The first two form part of the *Grimhilderness* series.

Grimhilda! a fantasy for children and their parents, about a little boy whose parents are kidnapped by his babysitter.

The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret: a kind of sequel to Grimhilda!, with some of the same characters, in which Grimhilda's sisters want the hero's blood...but why?

Diary of a Prostate Wimp, a non-fiction book about my experiences with a prostate operation, available

And this year, 2017, I've finally completed a third book in the Grimhilderness series: The Disenchanted Wizard, in which the heroine finds herself sent into a map to search for her father.